no harsher than the bark
by pehtrovafire
Summary: Four times she stalked him, and the one time he went looking for her instead. [stefan/katherine]


**i.**

He was known as the 'Ripper of Monterey', and he was the hottest piece of scandal in the vampire universe since Dracula.

Women, and sometimes even men, were either drawn to him or terrified of him. Stefan left them in a pool of their own blood in the back of their cars, leaving the stain and detached head of the victim as he swaggered off into the bar; the same bar he went to night after night.

It was 1922 and it was the year he had—much to Katherine's displeasure—chosen to buddy up to Klaus and seduce his Original vampire sister, Rebekah. But still she stayed, always clad in someone else's flapper dress, hair tucked into an uncomfortable faux bob. She loitered near confectioneries, occasionally drinking from the customers or the tobacconists next door. She watched him each night as he strode into the bar pompously and staggered out half past four in the morning, one arm around Klaus and the other around his blond sister.

"Enough about me!" Klaus roared, probably waking up the entire neighbourhood. "How many girls have you fallen in love with, Stefan?"

"Too many to count," Stefan slurred back, the lie so pure and evident that even Rebekah snorted. "I fall in love with a woman simply at the sight of her."

"Nicely done, Mr. Salvatore." Rebekah caressed his chin in her hand. "But really, how many women have had the opportunity to spike that lovely heart of yours?"

Stefan didn't answer, but his facial expression pretty much gave everything away. Klaus answered for him.

"Well, well. She must have had some effect on you, my friend."

"Mmm, what was her name?" Rebekah pouted. "Was she prettier than me?"

"It doesn't matter," Stefan spat, "I'm not in love with her anymore. I'm not in love with anyone."

"That's such a shame," she cooed, her tone more malicious than sympathetic.

Katherine left right after the police came; after Klaus and Rebekah fled and compelled Stefan to forget them, after she watched him pick up the blond Original's vervain necklace and cradle it in his fingers, clutching it as he walked out of the bar for what Katherine assumed was the last time.

* * *

**ii.**

The year was 1959 in Oklahoma.

Stefan bore dark tinted glasses and slick, black hair chafed with thick creams and pomade. Black leather and skintight jeans were all the rage, and Stefan sported the same bomber jacket with crossbones everywhere he went; it'd been his calling card. Each time the sun dipped and the moon towered above the city, he lured petite blond women into the cold, inky blackness of the alleyways, and those who managed to escape alive would run screaming his name.

That's when Katherine recognised him, and she was impressed that he was still the big bad vampire that he had been thirty years ago. And even though most of the time his eyes were shrouded by his sunglasses, she placed his haughty smirk quickly enough for her to believe that it was her Stefan.

The first time he shrugged his sunglasses off, though, she noticed something she hadn't seen really seen before. Pain. Clouded in his deep, brooding eyes that had carried a century's worth of grief and heartbreak—all caused by her, she realised soon enough. Had she known that she'd had that much effect on the younger Salvatore, she would've gone looking for him sooner.

Now Stefan was a complete mess, going about the misty town and killing people senselessly. Instead of just sucking their blood dry or using compulsion to make them forget, he tore their bodies apart like a vicious animal, only to have his guilt win him over later as he hastily collected the victim's heads and limbs and desperately tried to piece them back together. But Katherine had always been attracted to messiness; the messier they were, the better. And she'd pinned Stefan down as one of the messiest.

Stefan flicked his emotion switch so frequently it was practically broken. One minute he was heartless, wrenching his victim's hearts right out of their chests while it was still beating; and the next, lying in the middle of the road, fingers curled tightly around a bottle of Scotch, praying in muffled whispers that a car would run him over. Katherine saw everything; she heard everything too, because she was always there. Always lurking in the alleyways or behind the speakeasies, never brave enough to face him; never brave enough to own up to what she'd done.

Katherine Pierce wasn't used to stalking people. Prey, maybe, but it's only because of the whole vampire-predator nature. Trailing her ex-boyfriend was something different completely. It sparked a kind of thrill inside her. There had been a few times where her own excitement drew her too close; if the moon's glare inched just a bit more to the right, her figure would've come into view. She'd even caught herself making up sentences and arranging bouquets of flowery words if he ever caught sight of her.

He never did.

Stefan was always strutting around town like the king he was, his posse of greasers following suit. Katherine wondered if they were vampires as well or if the smug smiles on their faces were a work of compulsion.

"Hey, Stef," one of them perked up one night, "who're we eating tonight?"

Stefan looked annoyed simply by the fact that the man even spoke, and he turned on his heel and glared him down. "Nobody. Now scram, will ya? I need'a think for a sec."

"What's with ya, Stef? Always shuttin' us out these days. Got a woman on your mind?"

"You know our Stefan don't do just a woman. He's got a different one each night!"

"Maybe it's that chick that'd got him all riled up—that Kitty Kat, was it?"

"Not that ol' bitch again! You're not gettin' all soft on us now, are ya, Stef, ol' pal?"

"Enough," Stefan growled, spitting the word through his teeth, "all of you. Go home or—"

"Or what? You'll tear our hearts out?"

Katherine figured that man was either very drunk or just plain stupid because Stefan's face was already changing, yet he was still laughing like an idiot. She watched in anticipation as the others egged him on. Two seconds later, the man's heart was in Stefan's hand, dripping with blood as he squeezed it between his fingers like a sponge.

"Gee-whiz, that Katherine chick must've really did a number on ya, Steffie!"

Katherine smacked her forehead with her palm and listened gruesomely as Stefan snapped the other imbecile's bones as if they were twigs. He shot the others a look that must have wormed its way through their thick skulls, because they careened the other way without further hesitation. And just like that, his emotions were turned off again.

"Let me make it very clear," Stefan shouted; to the scampering men or to himself, Katherine couldn't tell, "I don't give a damn about Katherine Pierce. She was a slimy, cold-hearted bitch and she deserved the hell out of that tomb. I hope to god she rots in hell."

Katherine whooshed herself out of Oklahoma so quickly it reminded her of the time she ran from Klaus. Her Stefan was gone, and Katherine felt his words sear her like a red-hot burning rod through her heart.

* * *

**iii.**

She spotted him again at a Bon Jovi concert in 1987, swaying back and forth in the front row. His hair was a familiar light copper and he was all genuine smiles and zero hints of darkness. The contrast between this Stefan and 1959 Stefan was so great that for a moment, Katherine mused over the possibility that this man was simply his distant cousin that no one knew about.

But then his eyes crinkled up into an even bigger smile than the one already plastered on his face when a blond woman approached him. Katherine easily recognised it as his special smile, as peerless as gold dust, only reserved for her back in 1864. She felt a pang of jealousy. Stefan rarely smiled, and when he did, it never lasted this long. The blond woman—Lexi, she heard him call—made him laugh, made his whole body shake with so much joy that Katherine never had the chance to give.

"How're you holding up, Stef?" _Stef_, Katherine ruminated sourly.

"Best concert ever, hands down!"

"So, it's working then ? This is getting your mind off you-know-who, Katherine?"

"You could've stopped talking at 'you-know-who', you know," he retorted, and if his frown wasn't so deep, Katherine would've been taken aback by the knowledge that even after twenty-odd years, she still had a pull on him. "Thanks for the reminder, though."

"Glad I could help." Lexi winked. "Seriously, though, I don't think she's worth all this time. You deserve better."

Stefan replied with a tight smile accompanied by silence, and Katherine was left puzzling over whether he agreed with the blond wench or if he thought that even after what she'd done to him and his brother, she still earned a place in his heart.

She'd pushed through the crowd, compelled a few to make way, elbowed her way through so hard she probably bruised a string of shrieking girls; all to get to Stefan, and was now only a few inches away from him. She stretched her fingers out in front of her and wound them around the cleft of air between them, but then froze in midair. He looked so happy, bobbing his head around to Livin' on a Prayer, roaring all the wrong lyrics. Lexi laughed and conked him on the back of his head. Stefan tugged lightly on her long flaxen hair and laughed along with her.

Katherine barely recognised this Stefan. He was far too happy, letting himself loose and free—of herself. She'd had the briefest pleasure of knowing this Stefan in 1864, during the first few vampire-free weeks before she compelled him not to be scared. Before she took full control of his mind and his every thought. Before she poisoned him with the selfish perks of becoming a vampire and forced the choice on him.

She felt a sharp twinge of guilt glide through her spine. She couldn't let him see her. Not now.

Katherine wedged through the crowd and slipped out of Chicago before Stefan and Lexi could whip their heads round to notice.

* * *

**iv.**

There was a particular brothel in Nevada that Stefan always went to. It was 1991, and the women were especially seductive, whittling piquant words into the men's vacant minds and making it so easy for them to succumb to temptation. Katherine had spent a few nights pretending to be a prostitute, earning hard cash from various wet men while Stefan was grinding up against another woman's hips in the upstairs bedroom. He never left until it was late, so she always slipped out of the whorehouse before he did.

"Give it to me," he growled one night, evoking nostalgic memories in her. "I am yours, Katherine, and you are mine. I want you. I want all of you."

"Brenda."

"What?" Stefan frowned, and Katherine heard the bed upstairs stop rocking.

"My name…" the woman panted, "…is Brenda."

"I honestly don't care," Stefan laughed bitterly before continuing to rasp his body against hers. He had the woman under his compulsion. "Tonight, your name is Katherine."

Katherine heard him compel five other women to be 'Katherine' that same week.

Stefan's patterns were confusing, and it was getting difficult to keep track. Katherine realised soon enough that he was his own emotion switch; always shifting from happy to sad, from bliss to misery. He drowned his sorrows in the warm slushes of alcohol and extensive company of women. He only really smiled a couple of times a year, when Lexi showed up or when he heard some news about his brother—only to go back to his brooding ways when the blond wench left and his brother rejected him again.

Stefan was wasting away a great deal of his eternity on booze and one-nighters. Katherine always lingered by, feeling each fine cut of guilt through her body every time she watched him. She was tempted to face him, to take his hand in hers and fulfil her goals for them. But he was a vampire now, and she could just see the way his face twisted into hatred at the simple mention of her name. Sure, Katherine was still on the run from Klaus, but she could bump into Stefan anytime she wanted. She just didn't want to.

Because Stefan wouldn't want her. Even if he was still hung up on her, Katherine knew that just by looking at her, all of his pent-up heartbreak and pining for her pathetically would be flushed down the drain in an instant. He'd remember all the times she compelled him, made him think that she was in love with him, force-fed him her blood, drinking from his own.

And maybe that's why Katherine didn't want to run into Stefan at all; because she was still the selfish bitch she had always been. She didn't want him to have the closure he needed, because she wanted him pine for her some more.

Because she wanted him to pine for her forever.

* * *

**(1.)**

Stefan walked over to the edge of the Wickery Bridge and squeezed the picture of Katherine in his palms. He contemplated flinging the picture into the lake below, or just flinging himself off the bridge altogether. He looked down upon the murky waters taunting him as he pondered over a seemingly transparent question: Why had he come back to Mystic Falls?

He knew the answer; of course he knew, and he swallowed her name back bitterly. She wasn't here. She never would be; his slip-up in 1864 not only drove his brother away from him, it had also made sure that she would desiccate in the tomb.

Yet Stefan couldn't shake an awful feeling that there was a part of her still skulking, still sashaying freely. Still going about being the manipulative bitch she was. He didn't believe in superstition—which was terribly hypocritical, if he were to say so for himself. He didn't believe in things like love at first sight and true love; Damon had been the romantic, the poetic, the one who lamented. He was the one who loved too passionately. Stefan just stood by and watched his brother let love destroy everything good in him.

Katherine was like a toothache; a rotting cavity at the back of his mouth. She was always there, always reminding Stefan how really deep his love was for him and how hopeless it was for him to try to erase her from his mind.

So when the car crashed right through the bridge and sank in the water, the first thing Stefan thought as he pulled the suffocating girl in the back seat was Katherine.

She looked exactly like her. Same bronze skin and dark hair, minus the billowing curls. Stefan wondered if this was a sign from the universe; if he really was doomed to an eternity of Katherines.

The next thing he conceded was yes, he was doomed, because during the first weeks in Mystic Falls, he allowed himself to ignore the girl's booming heartbeat and blood plainly flushing in her skin—during the first weeks, he allowed himself to think that she was Katherine.

He took the picture out each night, because the more he looked at it, the more he was convinced that she was.


End file.
